Work­ers over­haul gi­ant ships

One of the four largest in the com­pany’s fleet — the Sa­ham Max — is 360 me­tres long and 65 me­tres wide

MUSCAT: Four of the world’s big­gest ships have been suc­cess­fully over­hauled by proud work­ers in Oman.

The mammoth ves­sels, owned by the Oman Ship­ping Com­pany, spent be­tween 10 days and two weeks each be­ing painted and hav­ing their hulls grit blasted, along with other ser­vic­ing jobs.

One of the four largest in the com­pany’s fleet — the Sa­ham Max — is 360 me­tres long and 65 me­tres wide. That’s the length of al­most four foot­ball pitches.

The to­tal sur­face area painted was 42,248 square me­tres, which is al­most 10 acres.

Oman Dry­dock Com­pany (ODC) re­cently com­pleted the main­te­nance works for Sa­ham Max, Shi­nas Max, Liwa Max, and So­har Max, and four Very Large Ore Car­ri­ers (VLOCs), owned by the Oman Ship­ping Com­pany .

Stephan Au­mann, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of ODC, said, “There aren’t many VLOCs in the world’s fleet, and there are only a few yards that can ac­com­mo­date the VLOC and carry out dry-dock­ing re­pair jobs. The im­mense paint­ing and ma­chin­ery job done for the four ore car­ri­ers is one of our no­table achieve­ments.”

ODC is also de­vel­op­ing new busi­ness streams in the in­ter­na­tional mar­itime ship­ping and offshore mar­ket

“Since the Mid­dle East is still fac­ing chal­lenges in the ship re- pair mar­ket, ODC is de­vel­op­ing new busi­ness streams for the in­ter­na­tional mar­itime ship­ping and offshore mar­ket, sup­ported by our in­ter­na­tional agents and in­ten­sive pro­mo­tional vis­its to at­tract ship man­age­ment com­pa­nies, ship own­ers and offshore com­pa­nies from all over the world, and re­ceiv­ing them at ODC in Duqm, Oman,” Au­mann added.

“Oman Ship­ping Com­pany is one of our ma­jor clients that we have built a strong re­la­tion­ship with since our start­ing soft-op­er­a­tions. The gov­ern­ment-owned com­pa­nies are aim­ing to achieve a global vi­sion with their ca­pa­bil­i­ties in the lo­gis­tics sec­tor un­der the um­brella of ASYAD,” he added.